Sustainable Health. Sustainably Healthy.
I had this idea, that I’ll always be healthy, happy and energetic, when I started to work with body attention and starting to notice, what is happening in my body. Especially, when I learned more how I can influence it with my attention. I thought „you will just have to pay attention and then, that’s it. You’ll be healthy.“
Maybe that’s even true. I’m not giving up on the thought just yet. However - sometimes (actually very often) there are conflicting things I could pay attention to… My wish to dance for 5 nights straight might not fit exactly with the perfect condition for my feet to feel all fine and sweet. So after those five days, I’m most likely to feel my body in need for rest on one level. Exhausted. But also happy to have danced.
It is true, that I have much more energy now, if I look at the average of things. And when I’m hurt, I recover faster. I get to do many more things that I enjoy. But I still have days where „I can’t believe this is happening to me“. Where I get upset or hurt, where I have less energy than I would actually like to have.
And that is fine. One of the first steps, after noticing the body, for me was to realize that health isn’t something I achieve once and then it’s there. I guess it is the constant process of our body, that could also be called „surviving“. Being sustainably healthy rather means taking care of this again and again, adapting to the different situations and versions of life I’m – my body is – subject to.
Which to me is the next important point: in order to sustain and strengthen my health, I have to adapt. Adapting to different situations, dealing with challenges that vary; and very often situations that I have never been in before. Or I have been in before, but when I was younger (i.e. my body was different, I had different skills, experiences and needs). And adapting means, being able to change the ways that I have done things before. Finding new answers, rather than ready-made-recipes and rules.
For example I would tell anyone who asks me, that breathing will always be a good idea in order to sustain the body and myself. But - in which way? Breathing can be done in a million ways. Speed? Areas of the body that I involve actively? …there are so many ways and the more I play with different options, the more I find and the easier it gets to also adapt to situations that I haven’t experienced before. I try and vary. This gives me flexibility and surprises. Of course, there are moments of frustration, when it doesn’t work out immediately, but then I try again. And when I don’t have an expectation of how “it should actually work according to the last time” or a rule, there is less pressure. I can make a new move or another attempt.
And this doesn’t only apply for breathing in my experience, but with so many other things. When there is diversity in the movements and approaches I try, I can feel my whole body get stronger bit by bit. And this, in my eyes, is sustainable. Because my well being is independent from one theory or one movement – each situation will give me new experiences to learn, new challenges to deal with. When I agree that challenges will come, each one is not a devastating incident, but another day that I live. When I have the freedom to try out, each challenge and each moment of pleasure will increase my repertoire of tools to be more well.
So, I try to focus on diversity. On playing with yet another way to move, to breathe, to be.
And thinking further - Maja Nyboe, what is your approach to routines and movement?
Have a good weekend everyone!
Aninia
Qualified Practitioner of the Grinberg Method: www.aninia.dk
